


Truths and Lies

by Covenmouse



Series: The Lion's Roar [4]
Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Developing Friendships, Discussions of death, Female Friendship, Fire Emblem: Three Houses Blue Lions Route, Fire Emblem: Three Houses Blue Lions Route Spoilers, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-13
Updated: 2019-08-13
Packaged: 2020-08-20 22:21:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,437
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20235307
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Covenmouse/pseuds/Covenmouse
Summary: Leonie never knew Jeralt as well as she believed. Now, finally confronted with that difficult reality, Leonie must explain the true depth of her relationship with the Captain or risk losing her last connection to his memory.(Direct sequel to The Place Where I Love You.)





	Truths and Lies

**Author's Note:**

> Oh gosh, I'm still stuck on this. Considered just added this as a "chapter" to The Place Where I Love You, but the point and tone are somewhat different. I'm beginning to see that I need a collection for these, because there's more coming.   
ETA: Did that. Series is now linked!
> 
> On that note, we're also seeing a greater canon divergence, here. I'll be perfectly honest: I love the *idea* of Leonie, but find her canon execution... jlkasdfks. Not good. So I've substituted my own reality. You're welcome. (This is also difficult because I don't want spoilers for other routes, but I didn't manage to recruit her before the timeskip so I'm working without her in my current save.)

The taverns had already closed up shop, but Grizzle, the Company’s quartermaster, was excellent at her job. She’d procured three casks of ale before the group made their way up the mountain that afternoon, along with a veritable feast of hearty commoner fare the likes of which Byleth hadn’t realized she’d missed. There was the rich, nutty dark bread Mange loved to make in the rare event he had access to a proper oven, a thick stew with actual beef instead of war horse, ember-roasted tubers with salted butter and goat cheese, and honey cakes for dessert. The sort of meal Jeralt would love. 

Suddenly, Byleth is famished. She sits by the bonfire with Leonie on one side and Luca on the other, shoveling food into her mouth like she hasn’t eaten in days. No one comments on her lack of table manners on the stray tears still running down her cheeks. If anything, the rank and file seem more relaxed around her than they ever have before. 

The reason would be obvious, even if Byleth didn’t have remarkably good hearing. 

“Guess she’s got some humanity in her after all,” mutters one of the sappers who had only been with the Company about a month before she’d been requisitioned by Rhea.

“I can’t believe I’m saying this, but I actually feel sorry for her,” whispers another. 

“Do you think she’s going to come back now?”

“Maybe… It’d be nice having her on the field, again, but I kind of hope not.”

“Harsh.”

“Not like that! It just seems like the school’s been good for her. No matter how weird those people are.”

The last comment makes Byleth smile, briefly.

Thankfully, most of the conversation isn’t about her. Like she’d anticipated, once they got out of the stuffy confines of the monastery, the “vigil” had turned into a proper wake. Sure, they didn’t have Jeralt’s corpse to decorate the scene, but that was probably for the better. He wouldn’t have wanted them crying over his body, anyway. Better they remember him the way he was than lying cold on a table.

Across the fire, Grizzle’s deep voice begins the opening verses of the work song she wrote for the Captain. Mange soon joins in, and then half the company is belting out utterly obscene nonsense about Jeralt, a cow, and a crate of pistachios. 

To everyone’s delight and bewilderment, Byleth joins in. That is, until Luca elbows her and jerks his chin toward her right.

Leonie’s eyes are wide. She’s let her bread bowl sit long enough that the stew is leaking through her fingers, dripping onto her knees.

Byleth leans close; touches Leonie’s arm. 

The girl startles, then frowns at Byleth’s hand before meeting her eyes. “Ah--Professor? What’s going on?”

“A wake,” says Byleth.

“I got that. Why are they--that didn’t really happen, right? He didn’t--He doesn’t--why does everyone—”

Luca starts laughing. As Leonie’s shoulders square and eyes narrow, he flaps a hand at her. “Don’t you worry. Old Jeralt wasn’t exactly pure and virtuous, mind, but this is more of an inside joke from long past. It’s all in good fun.”

“Oh,” says Leonie, deflating. “Of course. I-I knew that.”

“Did you?” Luca says. He’s had a bit too much drink to be polite. “You said something about having been his apprentice, right?”

“That’s right,” Leonie says. She digs at the mushy bread with her spoon.

“When was that?”

“What does that have to do with anything?”

Luca shakes his head. “Don’t go getting defensive. I’m just curious. Jeralt was worse about keeping secrets than Little-Ms-Mute, here. Still.”

He’s not drunk; Byleth knows that much. Luca’s only had two mugs of beer since they sat down, and that’s never been enough to put him under.

But this isn’t easy for him, either, Byleth realizes. Not only losing Jeralt, but having not been there when it happened. Not getting to say goodbye. And…

Did Luca _ know _Jeralt was a Knight of Seiros before they met? Had Jeralt never told him, either?

“It wasn’t a secret,” Leonie grouses. “Did you even ask?”

“Shouldn’t have needed to,” Luca shoots back. He gives the girl a once-over. “You’re… hell. You can’t be older than Bye.”

“Bye? Are you leaving?”

“He means me,” says Byleth, finally ungluing her tongue enough to speak. “‘Bye’ is what Dad called me.”

“Oh.” Leonie’s eyes are on her stew again. 

Though she’s pretty sure she ought to be making more effort to diffuse the pair, Byleth has to admit she’s curious about Leonie’s apprenticeship herself. It’s part of the giant puzzle of nonsense that is her life. 

“And she’s not,” Byleth says, instead.

“I’m not what?”

“Older than me.”

Leonie raises an eyebrow. “I thought you didn’t know how old you are? Jeralt couldn’t remember.”

“I’m actually a bit curious myself, pet,” puts in Luca.

Byleth shoves the last of her bread into her mouth, and leans back on her palms as she chews; the better to bide time. She doesn’t know with all certainty how old she is, that’s true. But Jeralt swore her mother was buried in the monastery graveyard, and that gravestone’s date was still legible, even if the name wasn’t. 

“Dad never said my mother died in childbirth, but it was implied,” Byleth says, feeling the words out as she says them. They sound correct enough. “If that’s the case, given the date on her tombstone, I’d be… twenty-one, in a fortnight.” 

“We’re practically the same age, then. I just hit twenty.” Leonie hits the bread again, making a wet smacking sound. “Why _ didn’t _you know how old you are? He never would explain. Just kept saying it wasn’t important.”

Luca scoffs and takes another swig of beer. “That’s just like him.”

“There was an… ‘accident’ isn’t the right word. I was in the field, in battle, so I’m lucky all I got was a knock to the head. It could have killed me. Instead, I lost my memories up to that point.”

That isn’t entirely true. Rather, Byleth doesn’t believe it’s true. There’s too much she does remember that doesn’t add up to what Jeralt told her afterward. 

For instance, she’s sure the men who found her wandering through the ashes were farmers, not mercenaries. Maybe it had been a ploy of some sort, but… no. Entering a battlefield in a disguise without any kind of armor would be suicide. Jeralt was never much interested in suicide. In her memory, he had been dressed exactly as they were. 

But he insisted they were mercenaries, and she his squire. And she went along with it. What else could she do? 

Besides, what point could there have been to him lying.

“The oldest memory I have is waking up in a burned out village, surrounded by the dead.”

“That must have been really disorienting,” Leonie offers in a small voice. 

Byleth nods. 

“So you didn’t even remember Jeralt? How did you know he was your father?”

It’s a struggle to get the rest of the words out. But she needs to air this, right? Healing old wounds, that’s what nights like this are about. And maybe not talking about it has only allowed this all to fester. 

“It’s… difficult to explain, exactly. I understood a lot about the world, still. I knew the names of things, and how to use them; like my sword. 

“But it was like--like copying someone else’s homework. I had the answers in front of me, but I didn’t understand _ why _they were correct. They just were.”

She sighs, fiddling with the half-empty mug in her hands. “Dad was as distraught I’ve ever seen when he found me. I thought he meant to hurt me, at first. But when I got a look at his face he was so familiar… I understood immediately that I loved and trusted him. Even though I didn’t have the slightest clue who he was.”

Leonie’s chuckle is wet and raw. She clears her throat and offers Byleth a slim smile. “Sorry. It’s just that--I kind of understand that? Sort of.”

“How do you mean?”

The girl chews her lip a moment, gaze jerking everywhere except Byleth. In the harsh firelight it’s difficult to tell, but Byleth thinks Leonie might be blushing. 

“I met him when I was ten or so. I was out in the woods, foraging for supper. Er, my family didn’t have much so we supplemented with whatever we could find in the forest.” 

Byleth nods her understanding. She’d grown up doing the same. 

“I was up a tree after a robin’s nest when I heard the screaming. There was this huge column of smoke rising from the direction of the village. Black as tar. I nearly fell from shock.

“I dropped everything and ran back, of course. Had to pass through the fields. It was late autumn, and the corn was taller than I was, and I didn’t have any padding on so the leaves were slicing my arms and face to ribbons. I must have looked like a monster charging through. All I could hear was the screaming, though, and the sound of swords…”

She takes a deep, shaky breath. “And then there was a man in front of me. He was tall, and broad, and had a sword bigger than my leg. I thought for sure he was going to kill me.”

“You didn’t have a weapon?” Byleth asks.

“Nope. Left my bow back at the tree. So I knotted my fists up and flung myself at him anyway.”

Luca chuckles quietly as Leonie beams. She wipes the corner of her eye. 

“He let me get three punches in before he stopped me. Grabbed my wrists and made me look him in the eye. Told me I’d better run and hide, and not come back until I heard my mother’s voice. So I spat in his face.”

Now Luca is laughing in earnest. Even Byleth has cracked a smile; this could end in an utterly horrific fashion, she knows, but that’s true of most stories told around this camp. Sometimes the humor is black as the smoke of a burning village. You have to laugh, if you don’t want to cry. 

Besides, they all know who that man was, and he would never have hurt her.

Sure enough, Leonie nods to herself and says, “That was Jeralt, of course. And as he wiped the spit off, I knew I’d made a mistake. Not because he was going to hurt me, but because he _ wouldn’t _ . He wasn’t like that. He wasn’t even _ angry _, just… Trying to help.”

“I remember that,” pipes another voice from across the fire. They look up and Byleth is surprised to realize that the whole camp has gone quiet. They’ve all been listening. She isn’t sure for how long. 

The speaker was one of the eldest of the mercs; a shaggy, portly man in his sixties who ought to have retired years ago. If he has a real name, it was lost ages ago. Everyone just called him Pops.

“Don’t remember the name of the place, exactly,” Pops drawls as he scratches his chin with the flat of a dagger. “But Jeralt told us all afterward about the red-head spitfire he’d found. Said she’d make a damn good fighter, one day.”

“He did?” Leonie sounds so hopeful that Byleth feels a little guilty at how annoyed she’s been with the girl these past few months. 

“Yessiree. Can’t rightly remember what the heck it was we were doing out there, though.” 

Byleth thinks back, searching her memory for stories of a girl in a cornfield. To her surprise, she hears herself saying, “We were chasing a group of bandits through the countryside, right? Contracted by House Glauster. We caught up to them just as they started a raid on a village.”

“That was back when we were under Captain Fidar, wasn’t it?” Luca lifts a brow. “A few months after the pair of you joined up.”

Byleth nods. That sounds right, anyway.

“I didn’t know you were there,” Leonie says, softly. 

“I wasn’t on the front lines, then,” Byleth said. 

“Yeah, old Fidar didn’t care for putting kids out front to die,” says Pops. “That was before we knew what the Demon was capable of.”

He seems to realize what he’s said pales. Byleth simply nods, and says to Leonie, “I was probably on cleanup duty. Given everything going on, I’d be surprised if you noticed me.”

“That’s… fair.”

Quiet settles for a moment before Luca finally begins to ask, “If that’s when you met the Captain, though…” 

He trails off, seeming to realize the timeline doesn’t actually work. There’s no way Leonie could be his apprentice.

This time Leonie’s blush is obvious to everyone. “It’s not that I--I mean it wasn’t official or—”

She struggles so visibly with the words that Byleth has to feel sorry for her. After all, if there’s anything Byleth can relate to, it’s not knowing how to explain yourself.

She touches Leonie’s arm. The girl stops, refocusing her attention on Byleth. 

They could have been sisters, Byleth realizes. She remembers, now, that Leonie’s father didn’t survive the attack. Jeralt had mentioned something about it that the night before they’d left the village. He’d thought aloud that maybe having another kid around would be good for Byleth, and the girl in that village had clearly been enamored of the fighters. She’d have made a good apprentice.

But the girl’s mother needed help on their farm. She had other mouths to feed, and needed Leonie’s help more than Byleth needed a playmate. 

Had Leonie overheard Jeralt’s comment, somehow? Had she spent all these years fixated on the opportunity she’d been denied?

Maybe. But Byleth isn’t going to ask her here.

Instead, she raises her voice and looks up, finding another of the mercs in the crowd. This one is newer. Byleth doesn’t know her name, or when she joined up, but she recognizes the woman as a decent fiddle player. “Still got those strings of yours?”

The woman nods, and jumps up to fish her instrument from one of the tents. In a matter of minutes, they have the crowd back to singing and dancing, and making merry. 

Leonie finds Byleth’s hand again in the dark. When she gives Byleth’s fingers a grateful squeeze, Byleth squeezes back. 

Hours later, as Leonie and Byleth climb the pathway back to the monastery, Leonie says abruptly, “Professor? I know this isn’t the time, probably, but can I ask you for a favor?”

“Sure.”

“Can I join your class?” 

Byleth stops. A few steps after, so does Leonie. The girl turns to look at her with such apparent anxiety that Byleth wants to say yes without even considering the consequences. But she can’t do that. She has to think this through… especially now, when she is exhausted on such a deep, real level that she feels she could sleep and not wake for years.

“Because of my father?”

“Sort of,” Leonie admits. She wrings her hands in front of her. “Don’t get me wrong, I like the Golden Deer. They’re my friends, and Professor Manuela is sweet. But… I’m sorry for calling you my rival. That was stupid, and thoughtless.

“But tonight felt right. Didn’t it? It’s not something I talk about much, but I’m not always comfortable here, with all these nobles around and stuff. It’s why I hang out with the knights so much. With…”

Jeralt. She’d been constantly pestering him, Byleth thought. But then, if Leonie had really been a bother, wouldn’t her dad have gotten rid of her, somehow? He could have told her to leave, or broken her heart so completely as to get the girl away from him. He was good at being an asshole, when he wanted to be. 

“I’d been thinking about asking for a while,” Leonie admits. “You’re the only one who learned from him--really learned from him, I mean.”

“Can I ask something first? Before I say yes or no.”

“What is it?”

“Why did you say you were apprenticed to him?”

Leonie draws back, shoulders rigid and posture angry. It’s clear she’s upset with the idea that she wasn’t actually Jeralt’s apprentice. But she wasn’t. She’d never been given the chance.

And in the end, Leonie seems to realize that she has to admit it; maybe even realize that Byleth isn’t offering judgement. She sags again, before she’s said a word, and hangs her head. 

“I overheard him talking. I think, maybe, he was talking to you? Or about you? I’m not sure. I don’t remember there being a girl, there, but maybe I just didn’t notice…” She grimaces. “Either way, it doesn’t matter. I heard him say he thought about taking me on, and I wanted to go. I told my mother I was going to go with him; join up and send money home for the family.

“She begged me not to. She cried, and said I was leaving her just like my dad. And there were the babies to feed and…”

“But you came here?”

“Yeah. Somehow the idea of me joining the officer’s school didn’t bother her as much,” Leonie looks slightly annoyed. “Plus she remarried about six months before I left home. Peter’s fine. He’s a good help, and a good dad to the kids. He’s just not _ my _ Dad, you know?”

Byleth doesn’t, but she nods anyway.

“I tried joining with a merc band passing through that autumn. They laughed me right out of camp.”

“Really? Why?”

“They said they weren’t interested in an untrained runt.” Leonie scowls. “I hated them for that, but I also couldn’t blame them. I knew my way around the bow and lance, but I was completely self-taught. Their trainer wiped the ground with me as a ‘free lesson’ when I was trying out.”

Fair, thinks Byleth. Some of the groups would have used a girl like Leonie for cannon fodder. At least she’d tried to join up with a half-way decent band; one that would give her a fighting chance.

“But I wouldn’t give up! I was determined to find Jeralt’s Company and becomes his apprentice for real. So, I asked the Goddess about it. And the old priest at my church said the monastery had an Officer’s Academy that was technically open to commoners, if they could pay. I figured if education was what I was lacking, well, I couldn’t do better than the Church’s school. That would make up for all the years of training I missed out on.”

Byleth looks up at the monastery, back lit against the grey dawn. “They don’t accept students on merit?”

“There’s an exam, sure,” says Lenoie, “And nobles are shoe-in. But there’s also a price tag. Didn’t they tell you that?”

Byleth shakes her head. She supposes she should have guessed given Ashe's patronage, but she thought he'd been formally adopted.

“Huh. Well. I passed the exam easy enough. The money part was a bit harder.” She frowns. “It’ll be awhile before I can send money to my mother, once I start working. I have to pay the village back first.

“But I guess that doesn’t answer why I lied, does it?”

“I think it does.”

“Huh?”

“You admired my dad because he helped you, seemingly for no reason,” Byleth explained. “You knew him only at his best, true, but it’s what inspired you. The idea of him gave you a direction for your life. Or, am I wrong?”

“When you put it that way, I guess not. Are you going to try and tell me he was some kind of monster?”

Laughing softly, and grateful that she can do such a thing already, Byleth shakes her head. “No. He wasn’t always perfect, but I love him. I trust him. And I’m--I miss him. I already miss him so damned much.”

Her voice is catching again. More tears. How, by the Goddess and all the saints, does she have so many tears in her body? 

Byleth sniffles and pulls herself back together. At least this is already getting easier, in no small part thanks to Luca and the others. And thanks to Leonie. 

“Sometime today, we’ll talk to Seteth about the transfer. Okay? If it’s really what you want. I think it’d be nice, if we got to know each other a little better.”

Leonie smiles at her, and nods. Together they finish their climb to the monastery, and into a future where they might not have Jeralt but they might have each other. 


End file.
